Apple released the iOS 5 beta 2 for developers a few days ago without any official announcements or whatsoever. Not that we expected something like that, it’s just another iOS beta version after all.

Still many users have already upgraded with the first beta (one way or another) and are surely eager to get the new one. I’ve already installed and explored it and here is a quick summary of the changes I found so far.

Just as expected, although disappointing, you can’t install the iOS 5 beta 2 via the Update option. You’ll have to use the (custom) Restore function so back up your device before doing that (unless you rely completely on an iCloud backup).

The new beta version brings two major improvements – the Wi-Fi sync and the OTA updates are now working. To sync your device via iTunes wirelessly, you need to connect it via a cable and check the Wi-Fi sync option on the Summary page. Then you are good to go.

There are no OTA updates currently available, but at least they have been enabled so they will come eventually.

There are a few other tweaks too:

The Notification Center now recognizes which notifications have been read, so it no longer requires manual notification removal. It also shows No New Notification message when needed.

The pop-up notifications has been redesigned for the lockscreen.

The stock wallpapers are back.

You can now create (edit and delete too) new albums within the Photo app. But your pictures are not duplicated, so when you remove them from the camera roll, they are gone from the albums too, but if you delete it from an album the image is still present in the camera roll. So those are more of folders with shortcuts than albums with real images.

Other interesting stuff about the new beta is that the beta 1 (redsn0w) jailbreak also works here, but the (Gevey) SIM unlock doesn’t. And iMessage doesn’t work between devices running on different beta versions.

That pretty much sums it up. To install the new beta you need to get iTunes 10.5 beta 2 first and then the new beta image (817MB).

In case you are still unfamiliar, you can’t install on your iDevice iOS beta unless you have a developer account or your iDevice UDID is associated with another developer account.